Schliephacke floor lamp

In the rooms of the student union Eichkamp in Berlin-Grunewald, this lamp was originally intended to provide light. Because in this form of housing the spatial conditions were (and are) known to be cramped, its designer Fridtjof Schliephacke created in 1959 a form that can be used either as a table lamp, floor lamp or bed lamp and can provide both direct and indirect light.
The basic structure of the lamp is - as is common with bauhaus close Objekten - constructed for industrial production. On the base in the form of a cast iron plate stand two aluminum spars, which are connected by bolts in three heights. The arm of the luminaire can stand upright between the uprights or be hooked into the aluminum uprights by means of milled grooves at the three heights of the bolts - at right angles to them or in a variable inclined position. The uppermost part of the arm can be locked in any position with a wing screw, and the reflector can be rotated through 360°.
Even though the manufacture of the lamp proved in the end far too expensive to equip entire dormitories with it, the moderately affectionately dubbed "Berlin frying pan" found its way into the homes of quite a few people interested in design.

Mawa Design was founded in 1977 by Martin Wallroth in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Wallroth initially developed and produced objects for the living area and often played a pioneering role for formative ideas in product design. In the 1980s, he began fruitful collaborations with external designers excelling at bringing product ideas quickly to commercial viability thanks to the company’s flexible structure. While diligently producing the various serial models, Mawa customized a selection of products to different specifications: Luminaires for the master houses at the Bauhaus Dessau, the home of Corbusier, the University of the Arts and the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin, the Treptow Crematorium and the Luther House in Wittenberg were among them. And last but not least, museums worldwide present Mawa luminaires, renowned for high-quality materials and unsurpassed technical implementation, as parts of their collections.

Mawa luminaires have always been at the cutting edge of light design while excelling at the technical execution and directing the light with regard to the fancied visual impact. Groundbreaking innovations in the lighting sector, such as the LED filament light bulbs, immediately found their way into the Mawa product cosmos. A decisive factor in the entrepreneurial success of Mawa Design was (and still is) the extraordinary combination of design studio and manufactory. Since 1997, the company has been based in the Palmhof, a renovated and listed historical monument in Langerwisch near Potsdam. Eventually, the manufactory offers enough space for all employees and the creation and production of the numerous in-house designs such as the wall and mirror lamp “Linestra”, the wall and ceiling lamps “Etna” and “Eintopf”, plus lighting classics of other renowned designers such as the pendant lamp “Havanna” designed by Wilhelm Braun-Feldweg or the floor lamp “Schliephacke” named after its creator.